Bonkers Blog August 2017

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Today’s
Twitter BS from Bexley Conservatives was arguably naughtier than most. It says their auditors rated Bexley Council as “efficient and effective”.
So what? They gave the same positive rating a year ago after
discovering massive fiddling in the parking department.

They had two contracts, one honest and above board for public consumption and
the other which included illegal incentives so that traffic wardens could
collect bonuses for extra tickets issued.

But that wasn’t all. Nothing was done about their bailiffs imposing illegal
charges, unwarranted charges and duplicate charges on those who didn’t pay their fines.
Every single bailiff transaction sampled and checked included illegal charges.

Bexley Council knew it and their internal auditor, who I believe must have been
genuinely shocked at what he found, littered his report with the word
‘maladministration’, I have a copy of it. The auditor should have prosecuted
someone but instead invited me to do so at my expense. I can only assume that
they didn’t want to risk losing their contract with Bexley Council.

Despite finding “maladministration” on the grand scale, Bexley Council was still
given a clean bill of health. The words “efficient and effective” are absolutely
meaningless as are most of Bexley Conservative’s Twitter posts.

There is more detail on
an
eighteen month old blog. If you are tempted to read it please remember that
the references to Councillor Fothergill are very dated. It was not apparent at
the time but she was the unfortunate victim of a stitch up because she shopped a
fellow Conservative to the police for theft. Honesty is not appreciated by
Bexley’s leadership.